UAE | Environment
Quake rumours sweep the nation
Scientists fire up the world's biggest atom-smasher in Geneva in the quest for unravelling the secrets of the cosmos - a test that doomsayers had said would create the cataclysmic suck of a black hole and spell the end of Earth.
- By Chiranjib Sengupta, Deputy Night Editor
- Published: 23:39 September 10, 2008
Dubai: Scientists fire up the world's biggest atom-smasher in Geneva in the quest for unravelling the secrets of the cosmos - a test that doomsayers had said would create the cataclysmic suck of a black hole and spell the end of Earth.
Hours later, a powerful earthquake jolts southern Iran, bringing death and destruction and sending aftershocks that could be felt even in the neighbouring Gulf states.
Rumours began circulating on Wednesday that the tremors in Iran were inexorably linked to the Swiss mission. Why is it that on the day of man's dark journey to find and define matter and energy does the force of destruction strike? Wasn't the Bandar Abbas quake the warning signs of things to come if the atom-smashing experiment gathers steam in Geneva?
Even before the Big Bang reprise conducted by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) came to fruition in Switzerland, several people had predicted that the experiment would create black holes or a hypothetical particle called a strangelet that would destroy the planet.
The reason behind such doomsday fears was that CERN scientists were recreating the conditions that led to creation of the universe, which could in turn create an undefined mass whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth.
But the process of smashing atoms itself hasn't begun. The first collisions of atomic particles are expected to start several weeks from now.
And for the record, Iran sits over some of the biggest faults in the earth's crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes. Many of them have been far more devastating, and happened at a time when nobody had ever heard of a Large Hadron Collider, the contraption in which atoms will be smashed.
Much to the dismay of the conspiracy theorists, the events are not even remotely linked.
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